writelasse Reviews

The Grudge (2004)

Another one bites the grudge

[3/10 · 2 June 2005]

I saw this movie yesterday and actually was a bit bored with it. Sure, i got scared by the countless scenes of another scary looking pale boy/woman popping up in an unexpected place (properly triggered by a typical gloomy low pitched sound), but that can't quite cover up for the lack of tension and consistency and the one dimensional characters.

Maybe it's the American version that does it. I saw the original Japanese versions of "The Ring" and "Dark Water" and they scared the living daylights out of me. "The Ring" is a movie that still scares med today, several years after watching it.

Back to "The Grudge": The cast, in my opinion, feels way to big for a minimalistic thriller like this. What are all these people doing there? Bill Pullman is absolutely wasted in that little part that he plays. It feels like the director tried to squeeze the cast of three movies into one.

The ending: It seems that they are all going to die anyways, so what's the point in getting emotionally involved? And of course the body of Karens boyfriend has to suddenly move under the sheet. How surprising. Spend your money on a more original thriller/horror movie than this.

Dear Wendy (2005)

We all got it in us

[7/10 · 5 February 2005]

Dear Wendy is an ironic movie about a group of youths who discovers their fascination for firearms. Although non violent and self declared pacifists they discover that "packing a gun" and organizing themselves in a underground group called "The Dandies" gives them moral strength and self esteem in everyday life. They swear never to use or show their weapons outside the abandoned mine they are using as a shooting range, but of course, it all goes wrong in the end.

Persiflaging American gun culture, small towns and westerns, the movie contains several themes. Obviously it is about how we all have, a sometimes even erotic, fascination for guns in us regardless of how left winged and peaceful we are. Just see the video clips of the actors trying out the guns (and the fascination in their eyes) on the official site dearwendy.dk. It is also about the personal relationship many Americans have about the use of guns, and the sexual meaning of guns. The Dandies are taking this to the extreme by naming their guns, calling them "partners", writing poems and love letters to them, and using the metaphor "love making" for the absolute forbidden thing: Using the gun against another human.

The setting is director Thomas Vinterbergs idea of a run down mine city somewhere in midwestern USA. It is not a realistic American town but more like the setting of a play in a theater with all the clichés: A coffee drinking sheriff, a general store, macho-like mine people, etc.

The movie ends with a spaghetti western-like bullit spraying showdown, accompanied by the tones of "Glory, glory Halleluja" (Don't take the movie too serious or get offended, you Americans out there, it is meant ironic. :-) ) The movie challenges you. First of all you also get fascinated by the guns. But you also sense that it is somehow wrong. You want to identify with the Dandies, but also you know how insane and appalling the whole thing is (A feeling you never get by watching an ordinary Hollywood-blockbuster). So you leave the movie theater with mixed emotions and by questioning your own moral believes vs. the instincts and fascination for the "evil" the weapons represent, instincts who by definition lies inside you as a human.